COURSE DIRECTOR
Services for Teens At Risk (STAR-Center) Director
Academic Chief, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
Endowed Chair in Suicide Studies
Professor of Child Psychiatry, Epidemiology & Clinical
Translational Science
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Dr. Brent is currently Academic Chief, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic and Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics & Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and holds an endowed chair in Suicide Studies. He co-founded and now directs Services for Teens at Risk (STAR), a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania-funded program for suicide prevention, education of professionals, and the treatment of at-risk youth and their families.
Dr. Brent is a member of the Institute of Medicine and has been recognized for his research by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and received the Ruane Prize for research in child psychiatry from NARSAD.
His work has focused on the identification of risk factors for adolescent depression and suicidal behavior, and on the translation of those findings into clinical interventions. Along with many other colleagues, Dr. Brent helped to establish the role of cognitive therapy as a treatment for depressed adolescents and developed guidelines for the management of treatment resistant depression. Dr. Brent and colleagues have endeavored to understand possible intermediate phenotypes for suicidal behavior and mechanisms by which suicidal behavior is transmitted from parent to child.